


We are not traitors but the lights go out

by chaoticallyclev



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 08:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticallyclev/pseuds/chaoticallyclev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a girl years below him in the Academy, and he never notices her–  until she has a knife pressed to his throat, tip drawing a thin line of blood.</p><p>After that, he hardly ever stops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We are not traitors but the lights go out

**Author's Note:**

> (The Hunger Games, Cato/Clove, pg-13 for series typical violence, ~800 words)
> 
> My brain was completely eaten up with this back when I first wrote it a few months ago and it still kind of eats me up, which is possibly why it's taken so long to post. Title is from Richard Siken's _Saying Your Names_. Thanks to [](http://epistolic.livejournal.com/profile)[**epistolic**](http://epistolic.livejournal.com/) and [](http://piecesof-reeses.livejournal.com/profile)[**piecesof_reeses**](http://piecesof-reeses.livejournal.com/) for, well, existing, pretty much.

  


:::  
 **We are not traitors but the lights go out**  
:::

There is a girl years below him in the Academy, and he never notices her. Cato doesn’t pay much attention beyond the point of his sword, the reach of his opponent.

People are a weakness, his father tells him. People are expendable, feelings are exploitable. The only friendship you will need is an alliance easily ended with a blade.

 

 

There is a girl years below him in the Academy, and he never notices her– until she has a knife pressed to his throat, tip drawing a thin line of blood.

 

After that, he hardly ever stops.

 

 

 

 

She is young, a small freckled girl, and her name is _Clover._

She’ll cut you if you call her that, though. Carve into your arm: C – L – O – V – E. No ‘r’.

Clove, just Clove.

 

(She was never just Clove)

 

Officially, the violence is frowned upon. Unofficially, it causes her to climb up the ranks.

 

Clove is very good at getting the attention she deserves.

 

 

 

Afternoons following training, he’ll toss her namesake in handfuls at her head, the green tangling in her hair. She smiles like a promise, continues sharpening her knife. Her teeth and the blade glint the same in the sunlight.

 

 

It is always the two of them. His hand at her throat, her knife at his heart.

 

 

There is this knowledge there. They will be going into the arena someday. Not the knowledge of the possibility that the Academy represents, but the surety in the way she grips her blade, in the way he hefts his sword.

 

She plans on killing him, and says so often. He responds in kind, as he should. He bruises her throat with his hands and teeth in turn, but sometimes– sometimes he thinks he would rather keep her.

 

She is too young, a small freckle of a girl. Cato has no problem lifting her up, pressing her into a wall, against a tree, pushing his forearm against her throat and feeling the strain as she swallows. She is too young, but she is fearless in his hands.

 

Her hands, a flash of silver glinting in the light. Her mouth, teeth pressed to throat with intent to bruise. The blood in the corner of her too bright smile. He pushes harder, and she laughs, a gasp of a sound.

 

She is too young, but she has never been too young.

 

Sometimes he feels ancient next to her, like he’s lived a lifetime bathed in blood, but he can still see her freckles, those little dots of brown that look nothing like rust.

 

 

And she laughs.

 

The announcement comes and she laughs, fearless and delighted. Clove, with her knife-edged smile.

 

The announcement comes and he knows it is not for them. They are not the love story here.

(But what if?—

There isn’t time to think like that)

 

 

(Sometimes, he thinks. Sometimes)

 

She tucks in closer that night, maybe because he refused to start a fire. He is out of that kind of arrogance right now. She sleeps tucked into his chest and he thinks.

Thinks of the freckles dotting the arm curled around him

Thinks that loverboy should be dead by now, and listens for the canon that doesn’t come.

Thinks, that girl is not on fire. She _is_ fire, and she just might burn us all.

 

 

The mockingjays sing a tune around them, and Clove shivers in her sleep.

 

 

 

 

He comes upon her crushed skull with his name ringing in his ears, with her fear stuck inside him like one of her knives. Clove, not Clover, was always fearless in his hands. She’s small in a way she has never been before. _Too young, and so small._ His heart freezes in his chest. His pulse turns into a hail storm inside him. It sounds like drums, sounds like steel against steel, sounds like the death toll ringing inside him. _Cato_ , she had screamed.

He breathes in— and waits.

 

They want him to move. To collect her. He isn’t ready for that. There are cameras all around him and he doesn’t care.

 

Thinks, if it had to be anyone, it should have been him. She was always fearless in his hands.

 

He grabs a handful of clovers from around the base of the cornucopia, tangles them in her sticky hair. Presses his fingers to her throat and leaves prints in her blood.

 

Clove, he thinks.

 

“Clover,” he says, and it tastes like goodbye.

 

“Clove,” he corrects himself, because it feels right.

 

They had killed Clover years ago, before Cato even knew her. Before all the freckles, before the edge to her smile.

 

He waits one final second, then grabs up the last of her knives.

 

Thinks, we were always dead, weren’t we?

_24 go in, and only one comes out._

 

Thinks, no one ever really comes out.

 

He heads for the field.

 

No one is ever really coming out.

 

 

Cato intends to make sure of it.


End file.
